The Toshiba Kirabook is an attempt to conquer the Apple MacBook laptop. It is an upscale Ultrabook laptop that has a sleek, thin design and a Retina-like 13.3-inch touch screen display. With the Kirabook, you also get excellent battery life and a speedy solid-state drive.

Looking for an affordable gaming laptop? The Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 might fit the bill. In a category where prices regularly register in the thousands, it's nice to see a gaming rig that costs less than a used car. It will get you on the gaming grid, but the overall package isn't the best, even at the affordable price.

The Toshiba Qosmio X875 is a gaming laptop both inside and out thanks to its design and strong internal specs that include an Intel Core i7, 1080p display and 16GB of RAM. The display is also stereoscopic 3D-enabled and it also has a Blu-ray burner, which is a rarity.

The Acer Aspire V5-571PG-9814 is a slim and portable 15-inch laptop that has a DVD drive, strong graphics performance and a comfortable, backlit keyboard. It could have better battery life and the display's screen resolution could use an increase, but overall it's a good laptop for the money, especially if you want to play 3D games on-the-go.

The ASUS VivoBook S500CA is a Windows 8 touch screen laptop that offers a stylish, portable design, a great-looking display and solid overall performance. It does suffer from below average battery life and an overly sensitive touch pad.

The Toshiba Satellite U845T-S4165 offers a lightweight design, extra long battery life and a high-quality touch screen display. We were really pleased with performance thanks to the Intel Core i5 CPU and 128GB SSD hard drive.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 is a powerhouse 15-inch laptop with a 1080p display, a comfortable backlit keyboard and an affordable price. It does suffer from below average-battery life and it does get quite hot, but overall it's a fantastic laptop for the money.

The Dell Inspiron 17-3721 is a budget-priced Windows 8 laptop that offers an attractive 17-inch display, good performance and a comfortable keyboard. It does have below average graphics performance, but this isn't really meant to be a gaming notebook.

The MSI GX60 1AC is a mid-sized, affordable gaming laptop that has a 1080p display, a Blu-ray optical drive, above average battery life and solid performance. It does lack a backlit keyboard and the touch pad is rather small for our liking.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S400 is a bargain-priced Windows 8 Ultrabook that offers solid performance and an attractive design. While it does lack battery life and display viewing angles, it does have a very comfortable keyboard.